FS Acceleration pack or not?

[Egbert Drenth 250]

Hi,After many many years I decided to install FSX+SP2 again, solely to fly VFR in the Caribbean. For all the other flying I'll stick to FS9.I read Nicks tweakguide and used most settings and used an online tool to modify my FSX.cfg.I have a few questions (actually a lot, but I'll keep it brief now :()- Should I install the Acceleration pack? Does it add something extra to FSX besides the extra functionality and aircrafts? I mean: does FSX run better/faster when it is installed?- On a few occaisions, out of the blue I get frates between 1-5. Pressing escape and continuing the flight, restores my normal frates. Is this a known issue?- In outside views I get pretty low frame rates (15-25) with REX clouds (not the HD ones, the DXT3 at 1024 res) Also I have max 3 layers of clouds defined in ASE. Be advised I'm not flying complex aircraft (Carenado C208 Caravan) Is this what I can expect from FSX? The inside cockpit frame rates are double from the outside view (40-60).Egbert Drenthi7-980X | Gigabyte X58A-UD3R REV 2.0 | Nvidia GTX570 1.25GB | 12GB Corsair DDR3Windows 7 X64 SP1 - UAC Off | FSX SP2

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

- Should I install the Acceleration pack? Does it add something extra to FSX besides the extra functionality and aircrafts? I mean: does FSX run better/faster when it is installed?

It should run the same as a properly installed FSX with SP2.The only reason you may want it for reasons besides the extra scenery, missions, and F-18 that it comes with, is that some 3rd party freeware and addon a/c sometimes require Accel to be installed due to their a/c using a guage that comes with Accel.However, I am just running SP2 and never bothered with Accel because I knew that I wouldn't use the missions, the a/c, or the extra scenery it came with.

- On a few occaisions, out of the blue I get frates between 1-5. Pressing escape and continuing the flight, restores my normal frates. Is this a known issue?

Never had that happen on my rig, so its probably something unique to your system, setup, OS, video card drivers/settings, etc.

- In outside views I get pretty low frame rates (15-25) with REX clouds (not the HD ones, the DXT3 at 1024 res) Also I have max 3 layers of clouds defined in ASE. Be advised I'm not flying complex aircraft (Carenado C208 Caravan) Is this what I can expect from FSX? The inside cockpit frame rates are double from the outside view (40-60).

It's usually the opposite for me. I typically get better FPS in external view and I do in the VC, but it can also depend on the complexity of the a/c I am flying and the density of scenery area. Although on my rig the external and VC FPS are usually pretty close. For example, flying the PMDG 747 into FSDT's JFK I will get about 25 to 30 FPS in the VC, but switching to locked spot view will give me 35 to 40 FPS.Your rig is a hell of a lot better than mine so assuming your set up correctly you should get very good performance in FSX, especially if you only fly g/a. You never did mention your clock speed of your CPU, so if your not overclocked it will be no surprise that your FPS may be a little lower. These days, it seems that FSX really works best if your running at 3.6ghz or faster. Personally, I get really great performance on FSX and I fly mostly airliners, but I am overclocked, use mostly DXT textures for everything (clouds, water, AI, scenery, user a/c), rig is FSX only, and the whole thing was professionally set up.Assuming you follow Nick's guide to the letter or pretty close, install things in the correct order, have your OS tuned and setup properly, use a low resource virus scanner or no virus scanner, and dont set everything to max levels you should be able to get along just fine.

[Guest firehawk44]

Hi,After many many years I decided to install FSX+SP2 again, solely to fly VFR in the Caribbean. For all the other flying I'll stick to FS9.I read Nicks tweakguide and used most settings and used an online tool to modify my FSX.cfg.I have a few questions (actually a lot, but I'll keep it brief now )- Should I install the Acceleration pack? Does it add something extra to FSX besides the extra functionality and aircrafts? I mean: does FSX run better/faster when it is installed?- On a few occaisions, out of the blue I get frates between 1-5. Pressing escape and continuing the flight, restores my normal frates. Is this a known issue?- In outside views I get pretty low frame rates (15-25) with REX clouds (not the HD ones, the DXT3 at 1024 res) Also I have max 3 layers of clouds defined in ASE. Be advised I'm not flying complex aircraft (Carenado C208 Caravan) Is this what I can expect from FSX? The inside cockpit frame rates are double from the outside view (40-60).Egbert Drenthi7-980X | Gigabyte X58A-UD3R REV 2.0 | Nvidia GTX570 1.25GB | 12GB Corsair DDR3Windows 7 X64 SP1 - UAC Off | FSX SP2

Excellent questions! It does not run faster with Acceleration installed. SP1 made FSX run faster and SP2 had a few upgrades that made FSX run a bit faster and smoother. SP2 is the same as Acceleration except for the coding for the additional addons. I have never heard of hitting the ESC key and restoring normal FPS. No matter how awesome and powerful your system, you need to set your sliders modestly and NEVER have them all to the right. There's an excellent tutorial for setting up FSX and tuning it over at the sims forums and the author also recommends keeping your settings down. Having sliders all the way to the right does not make FSX graphics look any better and you'll suffer frequent crashes, stuttering, blurries, and low FPS especially in ASE (or default) real weather in complex commercial addons and in commercial addon scenery like REX, GEX, MegaScenery, MegaEarth, etc., and at night time. It's impossible to run the sim for any length of time in that scenerio w/o something nasty happening and you'll have no joy with FSX. Sliders all the way to the right will also raise the terrain and actually make it look much worse (ie raised airports). I have my FPS limited to 32 and I consistently get between 25 and 30 fps even in the scenario I mentioned above. Best regards.Jim

[Guest bstolle]

Quite a few add-ons need Accel because MS corrected a few bugs concering flight modeling after the release of SP2.With Accel high quality add-ons can be even more precise than without.As FSX + Accel are rather cheap now since quite some time more and more developers release their planes for FSX + Accel only.I run FSX + Accel on my i7 960@3.2GHz without any tweaks at all and the framerate locked at 40.Especially for test flying and aerobatics I disable all AI traffic and lock the framerate at 60 which results in an extremely smooth flying experience.

[WarpD 824]

Quite a few add-ons need Accel because MS corrected a few bugs concering flight modeling after the release of SP2.

Really? That's odd. Acceleration was released before SP2 (I was on the beta team) and SP2 was extracted from Acceleration... so I find that a significant improbability.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Quite a few add-ons need Accel because MS corrected a few bugs concering flight modeling after the release of SP2.With Accel high quality add-ons can be even more precise than without.

Really? That's odd. Acceleration was released before SP2 (I was on the beta team) and SP2 was extracted from Acceleration... so I find that a significant improbability.

I was wondering about that statement as well.I have never heard PMDG, LDS, RealAir, or any other a/c devs say that you will get better flight modeling if your running Accel vs. SP2.

[Guest firehawk44]

To clarify, here's what Acceleration/SP2 did for FSX directly from the MS Team Leader - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ptaylor/archive/2007/10/02/acceleration-and-sp2.aspx Best regards,Jim

[JRBarrett 3,048]

I have never heard PMDG, LDS, RealAir, or any other a/c devs say that you will get better flight modeling if your running Accel vs. SP2.

One developer that recommends acceleration (specifically) is A2A for their 377 Stratocruiser. Reason given is that acceleration has a more realistic modeling of turbocharged piston engines, and to get the best results in the 377 - in particular when using their Accusim add-on - accel works better than SP2.Even though stand-alone SP2 came out after acceleration, for some reason Aces downgraded or over-simplified the turbocharger modeling from what was in acceleration.The 377 is perfectly useable with SP2, but you would not have the same degree of control over the turbocharger as you would with acceleration.I believe this also holds true for other A2A products that model high-power turbocharged powerplants, like their P-47.Jim Barrett

[Guest bstolle]

Really? That's odd. Acceleration was released before SP2 (I was on the beta team) and SP2 was extracted from Acceleration... so I find that a significant improbability.

Odd maybe, but easy to prove. E.g. I built the Milviz Cessna 310 for FSX + Accel and the performance was exactly to the book values and real flight tests.After release we found out that people with only SP2 installed experienced backwards rotating props after inflight shutdown and on ground because SP2 incorrectly calculates prop drag which results in a wrong drag calculation as well at idle and very low power settings. Afterburner handling is also different with SP2. There might be further differences but these are two very obvious ones.

[superglide17 11]

Egbert,With that rig and running stuff like Carenado anything, you should be busting 30FPS with sliders all the way right. There is something not setup right somewhere. Did you OC your CPU and or GPU? My rig is lighter than yours and I can run the Flight1 Mustang over normal scenery at 30 FPS all day. If I go to unlimited I will see 100+ from time to time and smoooth. Dedicated HDD for FSX? Memory timming? Defrag that puppy? You said you used some of NickN's settings. If you want to do it right, go back and check them all off, one by one.JMHO.

[mgh 89]

Acceleration adds some new features - check the SDK for details. Any add-on that uses these can't function as intended without Acceleration.

[jvile 1]

I would like to add to what mgh has said.It is very hard to compare what the Acceleration Expansion Pack adds to FSX vs the stand alone SP2 release update. If you have installed the Acceleration Expansion Pack then you can look for all the files that have a new date such as Aug and Sept of 2007. Don't even count the new Missions, new Airplanes, Carrier enhancements, performance files that pertain to DX9 / DX10, all the FSX Root .dlls plus many more files in just the Product.cab folder and you will find an additonal 3,329 updated files (many of those are zipped).Microsoft states

Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Acceleration Readme Final Release Notes: September 2007Developers should only use the Acceleration Expansion Pack SDK if their target audience is users who have installed the Acceleration Expansion Pack, or installed Flight Simulator X SP2.

Notice the latter part of that sentence which says, "or installed Flight Simulator X SP2" because, Microsoft goes further and says

or installed Flight Simulator X SP2. In the latter case the developer should not use any features marked as specific to the expansion pack if the add-on is to run cleanly on Flight Simulator X SP2 without the expansion pack. However, all add-ons developed using the expansion pack SDK but targeted at installations of Flight Simulator X SP2 should first be tested on the SP2 release.

You will notice in many Scenery uploads such as Ray Smith or myself we clearly say you will not see certain scenery if you do not have the Acceleration Expansion Pack. This also relates to aircraft performance that Acceleration has updated which is not part of the SP2 release stand alone update (turboprops, prop drag, afterburners, throttle thresholds, superchargers, turboshaft scaler and torque, etc.)As I stated the Acceleration Expansion Pack Disk adds alot more then just the SP2 platform performance tables for DX9 and 10. If I upload something and say it is for the users that have the Acceleration Pack then anyone that has installed the stand alone SP2 update release must test my upload to see if it will work. This includes testing files that have the extension .bgl, .dds, .bmp, .fx, .agn, .mdl, .air, .cfg, bitmap image, all default Simobject\Airplanes, .wav, .spb, .htm, ttf, .cab, Gauges, and the list goes on. If you only have the SP2 release stand alone update you are missing 1000's of updates that the Acceleration Expansion Pack added along with the SP2 performance table codes that PTaylor talks about in his Weblogs. The following picture shows many folders that added all new updated airports and scenery. In those SceneryX.Cab folders are 1000's of locations and airports around the world with a much higher detail that is not on the SP2 release update.In the development of ADE9X we have looked at all the different FSX updates and the SDK updates whether they are combined or stand alone type updates to be sure the developer has some understanding that the versions are different.jim